Could America Torture Again?
Photo by Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images
“Rather than another reason to refight old arguments, I hope that
today’s report can help us leave these techniques where they belong—in
the past.” That was President Obama, last December, after the release of a Senate panel report
on the CIA’s use of torture against terrorism detainees. Obama’s
statement encapsulated both his confidence that the brutal interrogation
techniques of the Bush era had been brought to an end by the executive
order he issued banning them upon taking office, and his reluctance to probe more deeply into abuses that occurred or prosecute any of the offenders.
Joshua Keating
But a new report
issued this morning by Amnesty International charges that the Obama
administration has effectively granted impunity to the practitioners of
torture, and that its reluctance to address the issue “not only leaves
the USA in serious violation of its international legal obligations, it
increases the risk that history will repeat itself when a different
president again deems the circumstances warrant resort to torture,
enforced disappearance, abductions or other human rights violations.”
Amnesty’s report examines what the senate document actually added to
the public record, considers the potential involvement of senior
executive branch officials (including President George W. Bush) in
rendition and torture, and finally argues that the senate report falls
short of providing accountability for the acts that took place.
“What we’ve consistently heard is this theme of looking forward, not
backward,” Naureen Shah, director of Amnesty USA’s Security and Human
Rights Program, told me of signals and statements from the Obama
administration. “They wanted to prohibit torture and then move on.” Shah
says Amnesty’s report is aimed primarily at the Justice Department, and
in particular outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, in the admittedly
long-shot hope that he might spend his remaining time in office (a very
short amount of time now that the senate reached a deal
on Tuesday paving the way for the confirmation of Holder’s successor,
Loretta Lynch) reopening an investigation into abuses. Holder had
earlier ruled out charges
against CIA interrogators in 2012 after a controversial three-year
investigation, and the department declined to reopen the case after the
Senate report. As for Lynch, she has said that she considers waterboarding to be torture, but Shah notes that she hasn’t been specifically asked about whether she would reopen the investigation.
Amnesty’s report calls for the Department of Justice to reopen and
expand its investigation and “bring to justice in fair trials all the
persons, regardless of their level of office or former level of office,
suspected of being involved in the commission of crimes under
international law, such as torture and enforced disappearance,” though
Shah notes that there are possible ways of ensuring accountability
without criminal prosecution, such as the truth and reconciliation commissions used by several Latin American countries to address crimes, including torture, committed under authoritarian governments.
“Our experience shows that any time people get away with torture,
you’re sending the message that it can happen again,” Shah says, arguing
that “this administration keeps getting confronted with opportunities
to take seriously the possibility that this could happen again and it is
failing.”
Women’s Boston Marathon
The Obama administration has not only failed to look into the sins of
the Bush administration. Obama may not be OK with “enhanced
interrogation,” but he has approved
the secret detention and interrogation of suspects before they are
turned over to the civilian justice system. His administration has also
allowed for the transfer of suspects to facilities with dire conditions
in places like Afghanistan and Somalia.
“There are places throughout the world where CIA has worked with other
intelligence services and has been able to bring people into custody and
engage in the debriefings of these individuals … through our liaison
partners, and sometimes there are joint debriefings that take place as
well,” CIA Director John Brennan said recently,
raising the disturbing possibility that the administration hasn’t so
much banned harsh interrogation practices as outsourced them.
As for what happens in U.S. custody, Obama’s most concrete step
to prohibit torture was an executive order that could be rescinded by
the next administration. This hasn’t come up much yet on the campaign
trail, but there’s already reason for concern.
Jeb Bush has said little about the interrogation practices that took
place under his brother’s administration, though several of W’s senior
national security officials, including two former CIA directors, are advising him. Marco Rubio has strongly criticized the release of the Senate report and declined to criticize any of the actions detailed in it. He has suggested that he believes waterboarding may have played a role in tracking down Osama Bin Laden, something the Senate report disputed.
At this point, it certainly doesn’t seem inconceivable that in
response to a major national security threat, the U.S. could once again
decide it needs to “torture some folks.”
No comments:
Post a Comment